Fed All Plants

Today, all plants got fed - it's spring! (Florida style).

• Bananas - Potash
• Palms - Timed release
• Bamboo - Timed release
• Papayas - Potash and calcium

FIRST CANE OF 2019
We went out to examine bamboo across the southern end of P2 and found a brand new Seabreeze cane.

We have had some 80-degree days with some nights in the upper 40s, the bamboo is happy and thinks it's Spring, we think so too😎💏🌴.

Planting More Bamboo in the Southwest Corner - Variegated Dwarf Malay

Last year we bought 9 large pots of Variegated Dwarf Malay Bamboo from Clay at Valkaria Gardens.  This bamboo will be perfect to create a 10' wall at various locations on the farm.  We intended it for Palm Island, but we're not quite ready to push the button there, so we're locating it for now in the southwest corner of the property.  It's nice that it doesn't hit 40' to 50' high like most of the other varieties we grow!

Here's some info about Variegated Dwarf Malay here and here.

Pictures to come soon!

BAMBOO MANIA, SEABREEZE BECOMES GREENLAND ON SOUTHERN BORDER

MAKING $229 POTS OF BAMBOO

At Rockledge Gardens they charge $229 for what they call "15 Gallon" pot of bamboo. With that as our guide we manufactured similar sized clumps from our nursery inventory. With Steves help digging the initial holes we were able to create seven new clumps from our stash of Seabreeze.



Mary questioned my move at first, "you want to move ALL the Seabreeze?" was the question. After a moment I said YES, lets do it.



I ran two 10 gauge extension cords to provide power for the 13.5 AMP SunJoe tiller. The tiller breaks up the sandy soil and makes it much easier to dig out the bamboo plants with minimum damage.



STEPS TO BAMBOO TRANSPLANTING

#1 Tie off the clumps with twine. Separate clumps into individual items to be moved.

#2 Put a long strap around each clump and draw it tight so the limbs are not trying to poke you in the eyes.

Bamboo Update 12/1/2018

It's December 1st!  And time to update what we've done with the bamboo forest here at P2.

The "Southland" has made major strides this year toward becoming a massive bamboo wall between us and our neighbor to the south "Sean".  Between strategic purchases of our favorite Emerald bamboo from Rockledge Gardens and the propagation of the Seabreeze bamboo forest clumps, we're well on the way to the impermeable bamboo wall we dream of.

I'll update with pictures soon, but for now, here's the lineup (starting from the southeast corner moving toward the southwest corner of P2).

1. Big Mike (banana plant at the southeast corner)
2. Queen palm (new, planted Nov 2018)
3. Calamondin (one of the few remaining citrus trees from when we moved here)

and now the bamboo...

4. Angel mist
5. Original recipe (propagated cane turned monster clump)
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.

The Southgate Seabreeze Bamboo Wall is Born!

Last week, I got very ambitious and, in spite of the heat and humidity, decided it was time to start to grow the south bamboo forest.  We had the holes dug and ready to go so it was time to either 1) buy 15 3 gallon bamboo pots, or 2) do some digging in the current Seabreeze bamboo from 2016 and pull out some nice clumps.

I've been very very anxious to do a "proof of concept" and pull out some very healthy clumps from the Seabreeze wall.  When we planted those 3 gallon Seabreeze bamboo plants, we placed them right next to each other rather than leaving 1 foot or 2 feet between them.... which means, there was PLENTY of bamboo to share.  I knew if I just picked a nice spot and began digging, I could pull out enough to populate the south gate with very little impact to the existing nice fluffy Seabreeze wall.

It took probably 6 hours total of digging, pulling, and sawing with the Makita reciprocating saw (bamboo rhizomes are a healthy bunch!)...  but I did it!  Here's the first pictures of the new Southgate Seabreeze wall.

(add pictures soon!)

WATERING ALL THE BAMBOO AND BY THE POLE BARN

Friday and Saturday were spent installing 1" Schedule 40 PVC behind the bamboo, these are fed by a new manifold at the sprinkler pump that allows the full pump output to be delivered to any of four areas. Now we can get adequate pressure in each of the four areas to really deliver some water.

Zone 1 = South gate pipeline

Zone 2 = Paradise Beach area bananas and Palm Island

Zone 3 = ALL THE BAMBOO on Bamboo Beach

Zone 4 = Food Forest and Polebarn areas.

I've been experimenting with Rainbird impact type sprinklers that I've seen used at commercial nurseries. A single impact sprinkler now waters the entire banana field at the south end of the big pond.

A pair of impact sprinklers are watering the Food Forest area.

A single metal impact sprinkler is watering all the plants by the pole barn.

The sprinklers watering the Bamboo are popup lawn sprinklers that we buy at Home Depot. These have a gear drive mechanism inside and they don't require as much water as the impact sprinklers do. Seven of these are on the Bamboo zone and all run at once delivering very targeted watering to the bamboo.

Melnor yard spinklers and garden hoses are a thing of the past in the bamboo area, I'm sure the lawn guys are going to be happy about this.

TEMPORARY HOSE BRIDGE
To get the water back to the pole barn I tried to keep it out of sight. There are many trees lining the route and this makes it impossible to dig down to bury an irrigation pipe.

To connect the source to the Pole Barn requires a single 50' length of garden hose. This will be replaced in the near future and we'll post pictures when it's complete.

NEW BAMBOO AND BANANAS, THANKSGIVING 2017

Mary could not stop herself, she was out bright and early every morning over Thanksgiving break. She was chopping broccoli, moving banana plants and carving out new bamboo from some of our Emerald.

Here is how you make bamboo, dig down, cut the rhizome and you've got a new stick of bamboo ready to plant

Look at those roots, this bamboo is excited and ready to start a new stand of Emerald

We love the green color of the Emerald bamboo

Four new bamboo plants planted in the shady area near our irrigation pump

These are the new bamboo from Rockledge Gardens plus one Emerald from our inventory

Baby bamboo we planted less than a year ago, growing nicely, very fluffy

Another view of Rockledge Gardens new bamboo plants

One Emerald cane in the midst of Rockledge Gardens bamboo, this one is from our Emerald

This group of bamboo was planted over the 2017 Thanksgiving break. We bought four Emerald and two Hawaiian-Stripe bamboo plants at Rockledge Gardens nursery. 

Mary dug and carved out more Emerald bamboo from our own growth. 

Ants under ground

The banana circle is flourishing, but no bananas yet

These bananas were floundering by the bridge, too much water so we moved them to a new area

The banana orchard

Angel Mist

Original Recipe Bamboo - Propagated

Emerald bamboo - propagated

Alphonse Karr

Black bamboo - almost left for dead after ignoring him for a year, and with a little water he's sprouting green

Another Alphonse Karr

Original Recipe Bamboo - Propagated (2nd of 2)

HO-Fo, One of our $10 Home Depot banana experiments

New Bamboo Update - July 1 2017

New cane on "A"

I found new canes on A, G, and H

So pretty when they first burst out of the ground, growing 6" a day!

G is particularly prolific with 4 new canes

The wall of bamboo will be VERY thick after this years canes

Bamboo Propagation Study - March 2017

I spent a couple of hours in early March using the reciprocating saw to cut out Emerald bamboo canes that had been cut short in the back of the 10 original clumps.  They were cut when FPL came through and decided that they were too close to the power line in the back, which goes over Drew's property.

That's fine, we turned lemons into lemonade!  I cut out the 4-6' canes at the rhizome/root level, cut them down to 2-3 feet, and put each of them in 3 gallon pots with potting mix.  The objective, of course, is to create bamboo that could be sold to someone (or planted all over P2's new ag zones that we're pondering).  There are about 10 pots which are now in the process of propagation.

Here's the timeline I'm going to be watching for:

First Seabreeze Bamboo Culm Baby! March 15, 2017

We were out in the bamboo forest today planting a few more bamboo from pots into the ground:  Spike, Baby Baby, Fluffy, Skeeny (propagated from original bamboo patch), and Tiny (an Emerald that was sawed out of the ground and insisted on shooting out green leaves 10 feet in the air before we could cut him shorter).  While out there, we noticed the first bamboo culm of the year!  One of the Seabreeze bamboo from Beautiful Bamboo is already making a culm mid March.  It's going to be a very prolific year for bamboo culms, I'm betting.

BAMBOO CLUMPS - Round 2

Last year early April we asked Clay of Valkaria Gardens to give us 10 clumps of field grown Emerald Bamboo.  They are huge, full, plush, green, thick, and exceptional, so we bought 10 more of the same this year.  Clay installed them a couple of weeks ago on February 8th, and Mark is doing an amazing job of watering them a couple of times a week (while we wait for rains to return...).  Then, a couple of days ago on Sunday, February 19th, Mark and I dug a trench and planted 10 Seabreeze Bamboo (3 gallon containers) that we bought in December from Beautiful Bamboo in Homestead, Florida.  So the amazing Wall of Bamboo is filled in, and we're going to be seeing some stunning culm growth this spring.  I'm buying an extra 25lb bag of earthworm castings so I can make sure those underground rhizomes are developing happily...

Bamboo is very fun, and when it forms a plush wall like our April 2016 Emerald clumps, it's nothing short of stunning.  What other plant can produce a 30' green wall in a year?

BAMBOO PHOTOS FROM 2016

Here are a few photos of bamboo to close out 2016. We recently acquired three large 5-gallon pots of Sea Breeze bamboo and ten 3-gallon pots of Sea Breeze to fill out our inventory of plants. 

Also some photos of Mary in front of our mature Emerald bamboo which was moved here at the beginning of April, 2016. Fall, 2016 brought us over 60 new canes that are well over 25 feet tall. 

With the 400mm Canon telephoto lens on my Canon DSLR camera I could not get Mary and the full height of the bamboo included in the picture, I did this to give a reference of just how tall this bamboo really is.

Six-ish Bamboo Planted New Years Eve

We love our bamboo wall...  and we're planning to extend it south very soon.

More on that later, but I wanted to make a note that "Six-ish", a 7 gallon Seabreeze Bamboo from Beautiful Bamboo, was planted 1/31/2016 between Six and Seven of the 10 Emerald Bamboo clumps.  So we named him "Six-ish".  He really fills in the blank spot with plushness and happy greenness.

NEW BAMBOO SPROUT ATTEMPT OCT 23 2016

Here are eight new pots eith our latest bamboo sprouting attempt fully underway (hint: it's the row with blue tags).

This time we took cuttings from a stalk of Emerald bamboo between the 4th and 12th nodes. Each cutting had approximately three inches of cane on either side of the node. Mary trimmed the outgrowth so a single strand stuck out above the soil (except on one which is completely buried).

We are excited to crack the code on sprouting bamboo, it's supposed to be easy but so far we only have two successes to point to, fortunatel Spike and Baby-Baby have both launched new larger canes which indicates they're healthy and happy.

NEW BAMBOO
- TODAYS COUNT
125 new bamboo canes as of today, that is UP from 103 on Sept 17th.

Today is the first day we noticed a new cane coming up on our "Baby" bamboo plant.

Here is Baby's first real cane coming up.

The "Overachiever" Award goes to Fluffy the bamboo plant, this beast grew at least 36" this week, it's going to be transplanted into bamboo area tomorrow before it bursts through the pool screen roof.

THE BAMBOO REPORT
I was just outside looking at bamboo in the juvenile area, all five plants show lots of new growth, leaves and stems.

Fluffy has shot up a foot this week on the large cane, he's gonna need a home in the ground very shortly or else he won't be able to get through the door.

BRING IN THE CLONES

We borrowed heavily from various gardeners on YouTube in building our Bamboo Clone Machine. Our water is from our own artesian well, we carefully balanced the PH to 6.2 knowing the 82 degree water temperature will rise in PH over the next week.

Today is day number one. We used Clonex for rooting hormone and the only cutters that would cleanly snip the hard bamboo cuttings were some new Xcylite flush-cut wire cutters I purchased recently.

The ART-dne interval timer is set for 50 seconds ON and four-minutes OFF.

Update March 2017:  None of the clone machine bamboo sticks rooted.  Bamboo is weird : )

Bamboo New Culm Count: 103

New count on the bamboo grove:  103 new culms!!!

On August 28th we had about 12-15 culms...   the bamboo has been busy!

Note to self:  fed all 10 bamboo (and T and Steg) with timed release fertilizer.

BABY-BABY BAMBOO & TIM
Last fall we began an experiment to root new bamboo from canes we harvested off our property. Out of 10 to 20 pieces that had visible growth happening only one plant sprouted a plant, I named it "Baby Bamboo". Subsequently while were preparing to dispose of the waste we discovered a second sprout had come up in another pot and it was quickly named "baby-baby bamboo".

Today we moved baby-baby to a three-gallon pot so it can develop fully.

baby-baby is closest to the screen, baby bamboo is next and to the right of it is our latest bamboo spieces which we put into a three-gallon pot, it's name is Tim as in giant timber five-inches in diameter and green in color. Mary ordered over the internet and received Tim by mail for a total cost of around $50.

It is a fun research project examining how each variety grows.

OVER 70 NEW CANES
This morning we examined the Emerald bamboo we had installed last March, we have over 70 new canes shooting up across the 10 clumps.